Monday, March 31, 2014

Friday, March 28, 2014

Okay, so here's step 2 of my Yeti illustration. A slight watercolor wash. Just two colors, brown and blue, to fill out some of the shapes and give it a little texture. The image is now a mid-tone that I can work lighter and darker.

I'm starting to realize painting a Yeti in the snow, among white trees, is sort of like the old "polar bear in a blizzard" painting.

From here on out, the painting will go digital. I may try a few different lighting scenes, to see what works best.

Thursday, March 27, 2014

If you've ever clicked through the PORTFOLIO link on my main page, you've seen my agent's site Shannon Associates. You've probably also noticed that the images in that portfolio have not been updated for...quite a while.

For the past few years, I've been so busy creating graphic novels, that I've neglected my work portfolio. I wish the graphic novels paid all of my bills--they don't. In fact, most years, at least half (sometimes more) of my income comes from illustration only--not projects I've written. Book covers, interior art for chapter books, textbooks, products--you name it.

Unfortunately, my illustration work has been a bit dry lately, due in large part to my non-up-to-date portfolio.

So I'm creating some new pieces--custom pieces--for my portfolio. Here is step one of an illustration of a Yeti chasing a skiing kid.

These are two things I've never done an illustration of: a skier and a Yeti.

This is black Prismacolor pencil. I'm trying some new techniques--the next step will be some watercolor washes. That'll be up tomorrow.

Monday, March 24, 2014

Fun news this week. ONE DEAD SPY has climbed to #3 on the New York Times Hardcover Graphic Novel list! Number THREE! That's only two spots away from the top! If you have been waiting for a good week to pick up ONE DEAD SPY, this would be that week. Do it!

And along with that fantastic news, it's official: Hazardous Tales books #5 and #6 have been ordered by the publisher. The Research Babies are eyeball deep in research right right now.It's a big week!

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

I happen to be traveling at the moment and I don't have access to my scanner or my handy-dandy computer drawing system. My plan was to draw some blog posts with my iPad this week, but I'll start that tomorrow. Today, I'm giving you a rare peek into my school visit presentation.

Since getting into graphic novels and US history, my school visit audience is usually 3rd-8th graders. I don't visit many K-2nd grade classes anymore--which I did when I was doing mostly picture books. Today was fun, though, because I got to do my old picture book presentation. The finale is a group effort where the students help me draw a monster, or, since it was St. Patrick's day, a leprechaun.

I have a marker and an oversized piece of paper on an easel. I start with the head, and take suggestions for each monster part down to the feet, and then we name him/her/it. Since these are leprechauns, they all have the classic hat and belt--and a last name starting with "Mc".

These are what three separate groups of 2nd graders came up with:

Fishy McShamrock has chickens for arms, and fish tails for feet.

Gorilla McDonald has "wavey" fingers, and also "wavy" feet.

Fanae McWilliker has five arms and frogs for hands. We couldn't figure out how she eats with frog hands, or if she feeds herself by letting the frogs eat.

I've done this drawing exercise with kids for years. It's very strange to see the shifts in specific body part requests. Four years ago, there was not a SINGLE monster that didn't get a "Uni-brow". Kids were insane for the "uni-brow." More recently, it's been mustaches. Today's had a strange similarity, pointy noses and zig-zag mouths. All three groups, not knowing what the other groups had chosen, asked for those two traits. I drew them differently, so the monsters--I mean leprechauns--would be different when seen together.

Another odd similarity is animals for limbs. I was stunned at the weirdness of "chickens for arms", and then the third group asked for "frogs for hands."

I don't know what any of it means. But it's interesting.

As I'm posting these leprechauns, there are a few hundred 2nd graders who are writing stories about them for homework. The frogs for hands issue is now theirs to work out.

Thursday, March 13, 2014

What is Dark Souls, you might ask, and why am I making posts about it here on my blog about children's fiction? It's a Playstation game--and it's my favorite video game series of the last decade.

It's Japanese, it's incredibly difficult and frustrating--just like the games I played as a kid. There's very little dialogue, no cut-scenes, no story arc, just grueling dungeons that test your skill and patience. My son and I have fairly difference tastes, but we can agree on this. This is our favorite game series ever.

My son's been sick with a cold for the past two days, he stayed home from school, so we have logged some serious hours passing the controller back and forth.

For long-time blog-readers, the long-ago Land Of Doom story (about surviving children's book publishing) was partially inspired by the first game in this series, Demon's Souls.

I'll do one more for Friday, then we'll move onto more wholesome topics. I know kid-lit fans are big fans of violent video games.

Friday, March 7, 2014

We launched Rapunzel and watched to see if other publishers would print large too. They did not. Everybody went smaller--this was right when the Wimpy Kid books started blowing up. That size, or thereabouts, became the golden size for middle-grade books.

One theory was that kids thought of large books as picture books--in other words, large books were for little kids, little books were for large kids. Middle-graders want to be anything but "little kids."

The middle-grader graphic novel shelf shrank to fit the smaller-sized books. Some of these shelves were too small for Rapunzel.

So, when the time came for reprinting a new edition of Rapunzel's Revenge (and Calamity Jack) we decided to go smaller. I was excited for a new edition, and suggested we do new covers. Not because I disliked the old covers--I just love alternate covers. Rapunzel never got an alternate paperback cover, I thought this would be a good time to repackage the books with a snappy new cover. Here's one sketch:

In the end, the alternate cover idea didn't take, and we stuck with the old, classic covers.

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

When we started Rapunzel's Revenge, I had never drawn a graphic novel, Shannon and Dean had never written a graphic novel, and Bloomsbury US had never published a graphic novel.

We had to make it up as we went.

The new generation of American middle-grade graphic novels had just started. There were a few books from Scholastic--graphic novel versions of GOOSEBUMPS, and the Babysitters Club, as well as reprints of Jeff Smith's BONE series. Kazu Kibiushi's first AMULET: The Stone Keeper had just come out. And BABYMOUSE was just two or three books along. All of those books were totally different sizes. See here:

Scholastic's books were somewhere between the American and European size--but many of them were black and white (like Manga). Scholastic learned pretty quickly that kids wanted COLOR. The BONE reprints, originally done in black and white, were soon brought out in color versions. BABYMOUSE was Manga-sized, black and white, but with one extra color (pink!). Amazingly, the one extra color worked! It worked so well, in fact, that many middle-grade graphic novels have since followed that format: Lunch Lady, Dragonbreath, and a little series you might have heard of called Hazardous Tales.

So, before we started Rapunzel, we had to decide what size the book would be--and if it would be in color. After finishing the inks, I admit, I sent an email requesting the book be black and white. Can you imagine Rapunzel's Revenge with no color? Size-wise, I wanted to go as big as possible--having long been a fan of the super-sized European-style comics (think Tintin and Asterix). Shannon and Dean's script had a lot to say, and I had a lot of scenery I wanted to draw. We went as big as the publisher allowed: not quite as big as the Europeans, but a bit larger than the Scholastics titles.

We went full color, bigger and thicker than a standard American comic book, but not quite as thick as a Manga. Essentially, we created our own new size and format--a size and format nobody else was using.

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Some of you may have seen the new SMALLER versions of the Rapunzel's Revenge paperback. Pretty neat, right? Highly portable.

For the next few posts, I'll explain the reasons we went with a smaller version of the book. Nothing shocking or exciting, really just a look at graphic novels and their sizing. It should be interesting.

Really, I just wanted an excuse to draw a tiny Rapunzel.

Tiny with a huge head. Can you imagine if the whole book were drawn in this style?